February 26th and 27th hotfixes are here and include an important change to Profession Traders--they spawn in a fixed order so you don't get multiple Fur Traders in a row due to RNG! Learn more about dailies with our 6.1 Town Hall Daily Guide.

Trade Goods and Consumables should now be correctly deposited to bags assigned to favor those item types.

February 27th Bug Fixes

A small patch was applied to live servers February 27th to fix some bugs. If you're seeing "Incompatible" errors, log out and restart the Battle.net Client to update, or try to play the game if that doesn't work.

The notes are as follows:

Blizzard

General

Fixed a number of issues that could cause the client to crash.

Fixed an issue where name and chat filters were not blocking some inappropriate words.

Classes

RogueFixed an issue where Combat Rogues were unable to apply Deadly Poison from the Spellbook's fly-out menu.

UI

Raid frames should no longer sometimes display character realm names in a second line.

New Site Feature: Hotfix Notes in the Database

This is also the perfect time to introduce a new site feature! We've integrated Blizzard hotfixes and patch notes with our database--if something gets updated, you'll see it mentioned on that database page now under the "Hotfixes" section.

This should help players stay on top of recent changes such as:

Ability buffs or nerfs--in-game tooltips do not update spell values until major content patches, so it's a long wait to see the correct spell values.

This should also help ease confusion when there's a new PTR build and players want to know what spell changes are new vs tooltip updates for old hotfixes.

All you have to do is visit an achievement, faction, item, npc, quest, or spell page. If we've recently covered it in the news, a description of the change will automatically appear! We cover up to four hotfixes within the last four months to keep the information fresh.

Fun fact: our developer Erorus suggested this feature back before he worked for Wowhead, and the feature went live exactly five years after he made his forum post.

Fixed an issue where various item effects that provides a buff based on the player's highest stat sometimes picked the wrong stat for Balance and Restoration Druids that were shapeshifted into Bear Form or Cat Form.

Fixed an issue where Ferocious Bite may consume more Energy than intended when the ability Multistrikes.

Talents

Bloodtalons (Feral) should no longer incorrectly consume a charge if the attack misses, is dodged, or parried.

Tiger Strikes should no longer incorrectly activate on unsuccessful autoattacks, but will be able to activate from successful Multistrikes. Fixing this will result in an overall damage gain for all Monks, so there are a couple of additional adjustments (see below). Additionally, Tiger Strikes should now correctly provide the full 10% chance to trigger for Mistweavers in Crane Stance while equipping one-handed items in conjunction with off-hand items. For more details of this change, please visit the forum thread: Upcoming Tiger Strikes Hotfix.

Rising Sun Kick (Windwalker, Mistweaver) now causes enemies to take 20% increased damage from the Monk's abilities (up from 10%).

The tooltip for Tiger Strikes is incorrectly stating that the chance for it to activate is 6.25% while dual-wielding. The actual chance is 5% (and has been since Warlords of Draenor released). The tooltip will be corrected in a future patch.

PvP 4-piece set bonus for Combat Rogues (Item - Rogue WoD PvP Combat 4P Bonus) should now provide the correct set bonus for Cold Blood. Note that the tooltip will incorrectly display text for the old set bonus and will be fixed in a future client-side patch.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that could allow the effects of Master of Subtlety to persist longer than intended.

Beastlord Darmac's Pin Down ability should now deal damage in a radius of 25 yards around the spear impacts rather than around Darmac. Additionally, visuals for the attack should no longer be sometimes hidden by the floor.

Resolved an issue where players that attempt to teleport back from a dungeon after having recently upgraded their Garrisons may receive an "Instance not found" error.

Fixed a server crash during the daily quest reset.

Items

Fixed an issue where Alliance players were unable to purchase the Battle Pet, Clock'em.

Twitter and Real ID

Bashiok

That's probably the cause if the Twitter options are just not there in-game for you, and our apologies as it was a fairly late change so not many people internally were aware of how it was implemented. Right now Twitter functionality is tied to Real ID being enabled, as it allows us to ensure parental controls can disable access to Twitter. We really wanted parental controls to be able to block Twitter access if a parent wants to do that, and to get that done and get it into the patch the best option was to attach it to the Real ID setting. We're looking into separating them into their own options in the future.

Blue Tweets

Trader Availability

Blizzard

Yes, and it's region-wide.

Of the new Garrison visitors who is at your Garrison is random, and what they offer is randomly selected each day, but that same selection applies to that NPC regardless of whose Garrison they're at for the day. So for example, you have the raid quest NPC, and it's for Brackenspore, and anyone else who has the raid NPC for the day also has that same quest. Tomorrow the raid NPC will have a new random quest, and anyone who has the raid NPC will all have the same quest.

The idea is that you're visiting your friends and guildies Garrisons to get access to each of the 5 types of NPC's each day, but that you're not needing to visit a hundred Garrisons to complete all of their potential quests.

Unlock Foundry Missions

Rygarius

For the sake of further clarification, Highmaul progression is not required to unlock Blackrock Foundry Raid Missions. Progressing in Highmaul provides an alternate way to unlock Blackrock Foundry Raid Missions, but it's not required.

Followers Assigned to Buildings

Bashiok

Is your Follower assigned to the building for each work order as it's completed? We closed a loophole that would allow you to assign a Follower to a building right before collecting the work orders, and gain all the bonus even though they weren't assigned to the building the whole time. The intended functionality (and the one active in 6.1) is that the Follower needs to be assigned to the building as each work order completion ticks for their bonus to be applied.

Ashran Changes

Holinka

We understand there is a lot of confusion about the removal of conquest points from Grand Marshal Tremblade and High Warlord Volrath, so we’d like to explain the reasoning behind it.

Our primary goal with Ashran was to create a zone where two factions were competing against each other throughout the zone. The average visitor in Ashran has two motivations: earn 200 conquest to fulfill the Ashran bonus portion of their conquest cap, and kill the faction boss for their daily chance at loot from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox. Prior to 6.1, players could earn that conquest by either killing the faction boss or by doing events. We were allowing the same reward to be earned at two different places at the same time.

This setup does not encourage competition. It encourages collusion. As a result, an implicit truce had emerged between the factions, where the Alliance claimed victory in the Road of Glory while Horde wandered the event areas unopposed for conquest. Both sides earned their reward in an efficient manner without any fighting. But Ashran is not a place for truces. Ashran is a place for killing. We removed conquest from the bosses knowing full well this meant the Alliance would be forced to compete against the Horde in events for conquest. Furthermore, we knew that facing new opposition at events, the Horde would once again engage in the central road.

Of course, we acknowledge that killing a faction boss only to receive Aspirant gear isn’t very motivating. As a result, we’ll be removing Aspirant gear from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox. That means it will always award either Combatant (ilevel 620/675) or Gladiator (ilevel 660/690) gear.

We are already seeing increased competition between the two factions in both events and the main road. In every Ashran instance, the population of both factions is tightly controlled to maintain equal numbers. Your faction has the opportunity to compete, but it is up to you to earn victory. Good luck and have fun!

In today's news, we have a short round of Blackrock Foundry fixes for February 5th hotfixes, pictures of the filters on the PTR, details on the Activision Blizzard Q4 earnings report, and info on a special Blackrock Foundry quest.

Players should now only receive a single debuff that refreshes when running through Blazes created by Siegemaker Mortar attacks.

Resolved an issue that could cause some Hunters or Warlocks to suffer fatal falling damage during the transition to Stage Three: Iron Crucible.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

Faction flags should no longer appear for players in an Arena or Arena Skirmish match.

Activision Blizzard Q4 2014 Earnings Report

Activision Blizzard released their Q4 2014 Earnings Report today, which you can fully read here. As we reported on in November 2014, World of Warcraft subscribers were over 10 million in Q4 due to the launch of Warlords of Draenor.

No additional numbers were given in the earnings report--in fact, they're vaguer than usual for a report--but it was announced that Hearthstone hit 25 million players. Numbers usually decline over the course of an expansion, and we'll have to see how successful the staggered launch of Tier 17 raiding and Garrisons keeps people hooked.

Goraluk Anvilcrack starts the quest. He is found at 87.3, 50.2 inside Blackrock Foundry, just south of the Iron Maidens.

Completing the quest on a higher difficulty also unlocks the Blackhand skip on lower difficulties.

Selfie Filters

A hot topic on the 6.1 PTR is selfies, with the , , items and achievement. The epic toy is available from a randomly-selected mission and we've finally been able to preview it thanks to user JorgeAntonioDS!

The upgraded comes with three filters:

: Enables a sketch filter for your S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera.

: Enables a black & white filter for your S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera.

: Enables a death filter for your S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera.

Below we have pictures of the camera UI as well as your screen affected by the filters:

In addition, there's been some recent Blizzard twitter activity, so we rounded up the most popular tweets on Foundry, 6.1, and transmog. Of particulate note--the Garrison Campaign quests continue in 6.2 instead of 6.1 as commonly thought and completing Sigil of the Black Hand allows you to skip to Blackhand.

Build Highlights

New achievements for collecting heirlooms, including Heirloom Hoarder which rewards the Chauffeured Chopper mount which is usable by lvl 1 players. The mount journal text, as seen on Summon Chauffeur, is "Why drive yourself around when you can hire someone to do it for you?" and Koak Hoburn is the driver! The 6.1 PTR notes stated that the mount would require all heirlooms collected, but Heirloom Hoarder is just for 35 which is a bit easier.

Garrison Campaign Hotfix

A hotfix will be applied in the next scheduled maintenance that aims to fix characters who are "stuck" on Garrison Campaigns

They *are* trying though. I've never even sent a ticket, only posted here on the forums and a GM has logged into my toon several times so far. It isn't that they aren't trying. I think the issue is the bug isn't happening to everyone - so it's hard to track what's causing it(could be more then 1 'trigger' even).

Folks like you, Xiata, were part of the reason why we've been making progress so thank you for letting us take a peek at your character!

Please blizz fix this!

That's exactly what we're doing and I can now report we have a hotfix that's in the pipe and is designed address the issue. It looks like some of you have already picked it up, but for those that have not, hang in there until the next scheduled maintenance when it can be fully applied to the game. Why some have been able to move on and others have not, well, that's above my pay grade but as you can see, we're on it. =)

Appreciate everybody's patience!!

New PTR Build Incoming

Blizzard QA has also tweeted that there is a new PTR build coming today. There has also been some speculation on what class changes to expect in this build.

There has also been a post on these follower issues from Blizzard QA Zorbrix.

Essentially, players should now receive the followers as expected following today's restart.

If you completed the quest before the restart, they're working on getting the follower sent to you.

Zorbrix

To clarify, now that US realms have restarted this morning, going forward players who complete the quest chain now should receive Choluna or Thisalee Crow as a quest reward as intended. If you completed the quest today (Thursday 1/22) and didn't receive the follower, please let me know, as that may be an indication something with our fix didn't work correctly.

Players who completed the quest before this morning's restarts (most of the people in this thread, for example) need a separate, retroactive fix to get the follower sent to you. This requires some work and additional testing, and is tentatively scheduled for next week.

There were also some spell fixes as well as a notable change to Mastery: Weapons Master for Arms warriors--it was nerfed as its effects were overtuned.

Finally, potions and flasks from earlier expansions should no longer be more powerful than ones from later expansions. Bit of a delay, but it's finally balanced!

WoW's 10th Anniversary Event Extended

WoW's 10th Anniversary has been extended to January 13th due to an accident which caused the event to end earlier today. That gives you an additional week to grab the following goodies before they're unobtainable:

Our 10th Anniversary Giveaway has been extended to the 13th as well--enter for a chance at Deathy, a year of free WoW, and more!

Bashiok

The WoW Anniversary event ended a bit earlier than intended, so to make up for that lost time and any inconvenience we’re going to be re-enabling it for an additional week. The event--including the level 100 Molten Core raid--will be available again from January 6 at 10:00 a.m. PST until January 13 at 10:00 a.m. PST, for North American realms. You can see the updated event dates and times in the in-game calendar.

Look for this and other hotfixes in the 6.0.3 Hotfixes blog as it’s updated.

Blizzard has announced some of their plans for WoW in 2015. While some aren't totally a surprise, there are some new ideas, such as in-game subscription currency.

There were also some hotfixes posted for December 18th, including a buff to Primal Spirit's droprate and World Shrinker's effect is removed while mounted now.

World of Warcraft Plans for 2015

Here's the highlights:

The legendary questline is continuing in 6.1, and one of the rewards will be a legendary follower!

Blizzard is working on letting players send out Tweets, including screenshots, from within WoW.

Flight masters are getting tech for more-direct routes.

Garrisons are getting tons of improvements, including daily visitors that send you on group content with fun rewards, new items to buy Resources with, new missions, new items to modify followers, missions for professions, and an additional tier of Garrison invasions.

Players may be able to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold.

Heirlooms are getting an account-wide collection UI and upgrade tokens that can be used on heirlooms will be obtainable through different forms of content.

More improvements to the arena UI is coming to make it widely available for players in tournaments.

Blood elf models are coming as soon as the next patch, as well as tweaks for other character models.

Improvements are coming to Ashran for queue times and faction balance.

December 17th Hotfixes

The most important hotfix from December 17th is that the Butcher can now drop a Green Winter Hat!Satchel of Savage Mysteries can now drop more items, as an incentive to reduce Heroic Dungeon queue times. It now has a guaranteed chance to award a piece of Heroic Dungeon loot (item level 630 rare) appropriate for the character's loot specialization, in addition to the guaranteed Augment Rune, and a chance to contain a mount, Follower enhancement token, Battle Pet, or Battle-Stone.